Your third financial scandal, Lord Deben? Now it’s time to resign

THE rich and powerful will always use their wealth to try to get governments to do what they want. No age or era is immune from this, and no country is immune from it either.

In most cases, astonishingly, it is perfectly legal. Only perpetual vigilance – best conducted by strong independent newspapers – can keep this in check.

But in recent years this country has also developed stringent rules to prevent the more blatant forms of influence-buying.

Quite simply, those in positions of power are now required by clear, unambiguous rules to declare their interests.

If these rules are followed, then we have proper transparency. A person who has a clear interest cannot be regarded as an impartial, disinterested advocate of any policy.

His contributions to debates on subjects where he has such an interest will in general be discounted or weakened.

It is a good system. The puzzle is that, even now, apparently intelligent, experienced figures in public life still seem unable fully to accept this. Lord Deben, now 79, is better known to the public as John Selwyn Gummer MP. He is a distinguished veteran of Tory politics.

A former Cabinet Minister whose son followed him into public life, he can reasonably be expected to know the rules and have a good current knowledge of what is and is not acceptable.

As the son of an Anglican priest, and an enthusiastic churchgoer himself, he also has an unusually good understanding of morality. He has had more than one serious chastening episode. The first was when large claims for gardening costs were revealed during the Westminster expenses scandal. He repaid more than £10,000.

The second was when The Mail on Sunday disclosed an earlier conflict of interest, shortly before he joined the powerful Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which he now chairs.

At that time he also headed the board of a company with strong interests in wind farms.

So it is baffling to find him in his current position. A company he runs with the help of his family – Sancroft International – has received payments of more than £600,000 from firms with interests in the very policies promoted by the CCC.

Lord Deben has even assured MPs that he has no financial interest in any enterprise related to the work of the CCC.

He has declared the fact that he owns and chairs Sancroft, which an uninformed researcher might see as full disclosure.

But he has not identified its clients, whose deep interest in CCC decisions on such matters as electric cars, solar energy, and biomass power generation The Mail on Sunday reveals today. All of these sectors involve huge amounts of taxpayers’ money.

This is especially shocking because of the huge direct effect on the public – mainly through energy prices – exerted by the CCC. In such matters we are entitled to assume that decisions are being taken for the general good, uninfluenced by corporate lobbying.

We also ought to be entitled to assume that our political class have learned their lessons from the many scandals over expenses, Formula 1’s attempt to influence tobacco policy, cash for questions and the rest, which have dogged governments of both major parties.

It is clearly time for Lord Deben to resign, and for Parliament and the CCC together to make quite sure that the committee’s future decisions are properly protected from any repeat of this miserable, unacceptable behaviour.